


sunlight and salutations

by anthropologicalhands



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: F/F, Falling In Love, Fluff, Introspection, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-14 18:38:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17513843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthropologicalhands/pseuds/anthropologicalhands
Summary: Valencia loves a girl who laughs.





	sunlight and salutations

**Author's Note:**

> This was meant to be a more structured fic, but it became more of a feelings one instead.

Valencia has always been an early riser. She loves the pale sunlight, the quiet that stretches across the streets of West Covina, after the garbage trucks have trundled past and before the hum of the daily commute starts to build.

Each morning, she wakes before her alarm even has a chance to ring, and heads straight to her yoga room. Before breakfast, before checking her phone. Life is in stasis until she has finished her asanas.

Yoga may have started as a way to keep herself fit, as part of her easy-breezy, effortlessly hot and fit girl image, but Valencia has always liked the practice for herself. It gives her time to unravel the knots in her back and in her mind, before the day properly arrives and she needs to put herself together again.

By the time the sun is fully in the sky, she’s ready to work.

~

Today, she has a new client. The client’s name is Beth, she lives a couple towns over from West Covina, and the meeting is at Home Base during Heather’s newly-instated happy hour. Valencia gets there early, portfolio in hand, stomach fluttering. Beth is one of the first clients to reach out directly, not just a friend-of-a-friend or another contact within six degrees of separation. And that’s nice, that’s good. She thinks Valencia is a good choice to solve her problem. Valencia is about to become known as a problem-solver, not just a hot girl. Not just a cool girl. She will be a normal-temperature event planner who makes dreams come true and builds up a fanatically loyal clientele.

Valencia is waiting at their table, hands folded, and spots Beth almost as soon as she walks through the door. It helps that Beth breaks into a smile as soon as her eyes settle on Valencia. Valencia immediately likes the look of her.  

It doesn’t hurt, though, when Beth laughs—actually _laughs_ —at her jokes and calls her funny.

No one has ever called Valencia funny before.

~

It becomes a game, to see how quickly she can make Beth laugh.

Beth is bright and wry and pretty much always in a good mood; making her laugh isn’t exactly the most difficult thing in the world but Valencia loves it. She easily becomes one of Valencia’s favorite clients, because she always knows what she’s going to get with Beth’s events, and that’s why her heart always soars when she sees a new message, coming through her inbox or blinking on voicemail or popping up on Facebook or sending restaurant recommendations through OpenTable.

Beth’s smart too, so she catches on quickly to Valencia’s game. She finds other ways to get Valencia’s attention; instead of heading straight for her table, she’ll approach from just outside of Valencia’s line of sight. Her favorite strategy is to sneak up behind Valencia and clap her hands across her shoulders, leaning forward until the wisps of her pale hair are in Valencia’s peripheral vision. Valencia can usually catch the scent of her perfume before she does, and she has gotten accustomed to listening for the familiar clicks of Beth’s shoes, but she lets her do it anyways.

Sure, it’s totally dorky, but her and Beth totally count as friends at this point, so that doesn’t bother Valencia as much as it might have once.

~

Sometimes in the mornings, stretching up her chin as she arcs her spine through cobra pose, Valencia imagines being an instructor again. Beth is wiry and her energy comes in bursts—more suited for pilates than yoga. But she had said before that she would be open to having Valencia teach her, to show Beth how to stretch out her neck and loosen those knots she gets in her back and shoulders; even with Beth’s easygoing nature, Valencia knows how those minor stresses can add up.

They haven’t made any concrete plans—it’s more of a passing notion than anything else and one that Valencia finds slightly perplexing for its persistence. Valencia is not generally a woman given to impulse. She likes to think things through: to make plans and implement them in a timely manner. It’s a quality that’s gotten her trouble more than once, when she wedded herself so thoroughly to one particular vision of her future that it nearly happened.

But even Valencia is not immune to the occasional drifting thought.

She thinks about how Beth would be more than capable. Perhaps not as flexible, and probably pulling faces as she moves through the stances, but capable, certainly. She would probably laugh as she tries to fold herself into the proper poses, and tease Valencia every time she adjusts Beth’s stance.

“C’mon, teach,” Beth would say, rolling her eyes good-naturedly. “I’m _doing_ it. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna split in two.”

And Valencia would laugh, but would still keep a sharp eye out, because Beth could be the kind of novice who overextends, either by pushing out her lunge too far or losing her balance while bring her hands over her head in tree pose, and Valencia would have to help her keep her center by placing her hands on her waist and—

Hm. The twinge low in her gut and giddy in her head at the image is pleasant, and not unfamiliar, exactly, but it’s been a while since she’s felt it.

Unfortunately, it’s also very distracting. Valencia sticks out her practice through all twelve rounds but finds no release and resolves to take an extra-hot shower to make up for it.

~

Not all clients are as good as Beth.

It’s been a long day, trying to be patient with a bride-to-be who has champagne taste with an apple cider budget and refuses to take any of Valencia’s recommendations seriously. Valencia can actually feel her body reacting sluggishly, rather than being ready to go at a moment’s notice. Luckily, she is able to go home and freshen up before her last meeting of the day, and as soon as she and Beth are done, she’s driving over to Heather and Rebecca’s murder house for some much-needed _gurlgroup4evah_ time, with gossip and Rebecca’s obscure references and rosé. After the day she’s had, Valencia wants all of it and she wants it _now_.

Maybe that’s why she doesn’t realize that Beth arrived until she speaks to her directly.

“Wow, Valencia, you look really nice,” she says, and when Valencia jumps in her seat and looks up she catches Beth staring with her head tilted to the side, eyebrows slightly raised. She drops her eyes as soon as Valencia meets them, and Valencia can feel heat rises at the back of her neck, and she adjusts the neckline of her wine-colored blouse.

“Oh?” Valencia clears her throat, embarrassed by having missed her usual cues. “Thank you, but it’s nothing. I’m meeting with the girls after we’re done here, and I just wanted to _not_ look like I went two rounds with Malia-the-Malignant.”

Beth winces sympathetically. “Hard day, huh?”

Valencia shrugs nonchalantly. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

“Yeah, I know,” says Beth easily, hanging her purse across the chair’s back before sliding into her seat. “You still look really nice.”

Something about the gentle firmness of Beth’s delivery makes Valencia’s toes curl and her muscles tighten briefly, and suddenly the sluggishness is _gone_ and it feels like there are springs coiled up in every limb and she can bounce around the room like Tigger.

But bouncing around like Tigger would be deeply unprofessional, so she says thank you again and pushes the venue list to the middle of the table for Beth’s approval and pretends to ignore the way the late afternoon light makes Beth’s hair glow.

~

There is a long stretch of weeks where Beth doesn’t have any new events for Valencia and has been too busy to come into West Covina. It’s not a disaster: while Valencia isn’t exactly swimming in clients she is starting to get booked on a steady basis, and therefore she has other things she can do.

But still. She misses planning for Beth. After all, Beth is one of her best clients. It’s fun planning stuff with Beth. It’s fun talking about things that are _not_ planning stuff with Beth.

Beth is in her head nearly every morning, these days.

So, Valencia makes a decision.

She sends Beth a message: _hey, it’s been a while, want to get dinner?_

It makes sense, after getting used to spending so much time together, to miss her.

She books one of the nicer restaurants, one that deploys candlelight in a way that Valencia knows is advantageous to her skin. Makes sense to dress up, wear a black-off-the-shoulder top with burgundy slacks and sleek heels.

She fusses outside the restaurant, wanting to appear relaxed, to lean against the concrete wall instead of being surprised on the bench, torn between pretending to fiddle with her phone or to keep looking around expectantly, as if she only just got there. The anticipation is like bubble wrap under her feet—sure, it keeps her buoyant now, but one wrong move and there’s going to be a very embarrassing noise.

She sees Beth’s car pull into the restaurant parking lot, and then Beth herself appears soon after. She’s dressed up as well – her black jeans are a little more casual, but her shirt is turquoise and silken and is both something that Beth would absolutely wear and something Valencia has never seen her wear before.

When she catches sight of Valencia, she smiles again, and Valencia’s whole stomach turns over in response.

“Hope I didn’t overdress,” she says, smiling, approaching Valencia and giving her a hug. Valencia returns it, lost for words.

She finds them later, over dinner, as she decides that maybe she wants a different kind of relationship, and that she wants to make more room for this warmth in her life.

~

“Good morning, sunshine,” Beth says during their first morning together, awake before Valencia, chin resting on her hand. Valencia fumbles for the alarm clock and groans at the time, before rolling over to poke Beth in retaliation for waking her when the sky is still dark. Beth squirms back in a brief but valiant effort to evade her, only to succumb to her own laughter.

When Beth laughs, her whole face lights up, and it’s impossible to look away, to not be delighted by the fine creases that fan delicately from the corners of her eyes and the way her mouth curves upwards. Each time Valencia sees it, and knows herself to be the cause of it, the world becomes so much warmer and brighter and lighter.

It’s a good way to start the day.


End file.
